This week we got our first look at the 12.1 changes and tier bonuses for all specs, including Windwalker. I had previously gathered a “wishlist” from some of the Windwalker Veterans, but I completely lost track of what day it was now that the school year is over. So, now that we have the first round of posted changes I thought I’d include both what people were hoping for and discuss what we got.
What We Wanted
Defensive Help
The one thing that everyone said they wanted was defensive improvements. People have been pretty vocal about how much of a struggle it can be to try and survive things as a Windwalker, especially with how much higher people are able to push in Mythic+ this season. Windwalker has a hard time dealing with sustained rot damage, such as on a fight like Alleria, due to a relative lack of health and damage reduction combined with very minimal self-healing. Vivify was nerfed going into this expansion, so even though we can use it for free after any Rising Sun Kick, it is just a small drop in the bucket. Additionally, Windwalker has some of the lowest base health of any spec, with many other specs having passive talents that increase their health. Comparing a Windwalker to a Warlock, a class that has a passive shield and more damage reduction than Windwalker; Warlocks tend to have 10-15% more health than Windwalker out of the box.
Many people are also feeling the loss of active damage cooldowns that have been whittled away over the last few expansions. Currently, Windwalker has to rely on Fortifying Brew and Touch of Karma as our only active defensives. Although they can be used every 90 seconds, Touch of Karma feels like it gets eaten up almost instantly and Fortifying Brew is just not strong enough or frequent enough to make a difference. In years past, Windwalkers enjoyed having the addition of Diffuse Magic, Dampen Harm, and if you go back far enough, Zen Meditation. While many specs have lost some of their defensive abilities, it is pretty clear that Windwalker lost a bit more than it could afford to lose.
Thankfully, our feelings are justified by the data. Windwalker is currently 37th of 40 specs on Paladins and Chimaerus, 40th out of 40 specs by a significant margin on Dragons and Alleria, and 34th out of 40 specs for Rotmire. To understand these numbers, when looking at the top 25% of logs that include a Windwalker, 25.83% of those logs have their Windwalker die at least once during the pull. If you extend it to all pulls on Alleria, 46.4% of Windwalkers die at least once. When you realize that a spec like Vengeance Demon Hunter, as a tank, dies on 21.37% of pulls, you can assume that many pulls where their Vengeance DH dies are wipes, so a pull where your Windwalker dies is much less likely to result in a wipe than any other spec. All you glass-half-empty people can clearly spin that a specific way and I’m not going to disagree with you. The same thing can be said about Dragons, where Windwalkers die in 51.26% of pulls.
Mythic+ suffers from most of the same problems, as anyone who is trying to do +20s or higher will tell you that at some point, your healer needs to pay more attention to you than to the rest of your group combined. Many people are evening coordinating with their healers to give them external defensives so that they can survive mechanics that Windwalker can’t survive without extra attention. I personally ran one +20 and it was the most nerve racking experience of my many years playing this spec. Not because it was hard, but because I simply had no room for mistakes or extra damage, meanwhile some specs, like Unholy Death Knights, can fully tank or ignore the same mechanics. While the infinite scaling nature of Mythic+ means that at some point everyone will be unable to survive certain mechanics, Windwalker hits that hard ceiling much faster. If you look at Raider.io, at the time of this article, only two Windwalkers in the world have cleared +22 in all dungeons and only 17 Windwalkers have cleared +21 in all dungeons. Compare that to Unholy Death Knights who have 597 players who have completed all +22 and 89 players that have completed all +23. At that level, a spec like Windwalker that cannot survive the damage has no hope of pushing to the same level as the ones that can, even if our damage is sufficient.
My assumption, and I may be the only one, is that there are some “fear” around giving Monks more baseline or talented survivability as it will also affect Brewmasters who are often one of the tankiest of tanks. However, that’s a stupid reason since Mistweavers are also feeling much of the survivability struggle and clearly they could tune things separately. There’s no reason for Windwalker and Mistweaver to be made of paper because Brewmaster exists.
Suggestions:
- Second stack of Fortifying Brew
- Reduce Touch of Karma‘s cooldown (and the damage it deals)
- Touch of Karma‘s damage reduction continues after shield and damage redirect is eaten up
- Increase HP through passive buffs or talents
- Passive increase to damage reduction through talents or buffs
- Vivacious Vivification casts Vivify every time you cast Rising Sun Kick
- Give us back Diffuse Magic as a separate defensive cooldown or buff the damage reduction so its worth taking more often
- Buff Yu’lon’s Grace
Conduit
Going into the expansion, Conduit of the Celestials was looking to be a smidge behind Shado-pan, pulling ahead in strict burst situations like early Belo’ren, but falling away in sustained damage and AOE. However, with the addition of Zenith Stomp, Conduit of the Celestials became basically dead. Playing Conduit of the Celestials is all about maximizing Heart of the Jade Serpent and Zenith Stomp has no synergy with that most important buff. So, you’re forced to either not cast Zenith Stomp and lose damage to not using the free big damage stomps or cast Zenith Stomp and use Heart of the Jade Serpent uptime on a spell that doesn’t have any connection to it.
While many people are enjoying Shado-pan, having two viable Hero Talents is better than one, especially for a class that only has access to one DPS spec. Unfortunately, even before the addition of Zenith Stomp, Conduit of the Celestials is just an absolute mess.
Talent Tuning
One thing that many people have noticed is that Windwalker really doesn’t have much talent diversity. We basically use one set of talents for single target and cleave, and another for AOE. Realistically, because so much of our AOE damage is tied into Fists of Fury and Zenith Stomp, the “single target” build is not that far behind the “AOE” build. Besides the fact that we really don’t ever consider using Conduit of the Celestials, there are many talents that are currently never used.
- Touch of the Tiger – Early in the tree, Ferociousness is just massively better
- Hardened Soles – Early in the tree, Ascension is better and only 1 point to go to Glory of the Dawn
- Crane Vortex – Spinning Crane Kick doesn’t do enough damage to merit using most of the talents that augment it
- Meridian Strikes – A decently strong talent, but you really need to be using Touch of Death very often for it to make a difference, which is only Mythic+ trash
- Jade Ignition – Same problem as Crane Vortex
- Cyclone’s Drift – Haste is good, but 20% more Fists of Fury damage is better
- Drinking Horn Cover – This was usable on Belo’ren to maximize Egg damage, but with the addition of Zenith Stomp, more Zenith casts is better than longer
- Obsidian Spiral – Zenith is already flooded with Chi, so we don’t need more
- Strike of the Windlord – Whirling Dragon Punch doesn’t cost Chi, and we want as much Chi to go into casting Fists of Fury as possible
- Memory of the Monastery – Mostly a number’s problem, more Tiger Palm damage is nothing but more Combo Breaker procs is good, just not currently mathematically good enough
- Thunderfist – Just doesn’t do enough damage
- Knowledge of the Broken Temple – Blackout Kick isn’t quite strong enough to merit leaning super far into it
- Slicing Winds – Good riddance
- Harmonic Combo – We don’t really have a Chi problem and reducing the damage that Fists of Fury does is REAL BAD
- Flurry of Xuen – Just doesn’t do enough damage and Shado-pan doesn’t have Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger to trigger this
- Airborne Rhythm – It’s connected to Slicing Winds, so I don’t ever want to have to take this unless they change nearly every aspect of how Slicing Winds functions
- Hurricane’s Vault – Same as Airborne Rhythm
- Path of Jade – If you’re talented into Jadefire Stomp, you’re doing it for single target damage, not AOE
- High Impact – The only damage increasing talent in Shado-pan that we don’t take because Pride of Pandaria is better and this one is too volatile
That is 18 out of 52 (34.6%) Windwalker talents that are rarely or never taken, which feels a bit insane and doesn’t include how there are more that are only taken so that you can get further down the tree or connect to a better talent.
The big one that people are generally annoyed with is Strike of the Windlord, which has long been a fan favorite and is now relegated to a weak choice node. It needs a pretty significant buff to justify the Chi cost, and I hope it gets it, because even after more than 10 years of playing Windwalker, Whirling Dragon Punch still gets me killed. The vast majority of these talents aren’t taken simply because of numbers, and I don’t think there are many that people “wish” we did take beyond Strike of the Windlord. I am not totally bothered by a lack of talent diversity, but that’s because it makes it easier for me to write guides.
Quality of Life
Fists of Fury and Interrupts
The biggest thing that people shouted the loudest about at the start of Midnight is that we are currently unable to interrupt during Fists of Fury. With how much more often it is cast, and especially how long the channel was before Crashing Fists was changed and the extra second of channel time was removed, having huge chunks of time where you don’t want to cast Spear Hand Strike or something like Leg Sweep just felt awful. I would like to think that we’ve all gotten better and are able to time our Fists of Furys so that we don’t have to interrupt during it, or even that others have improved at interrupting so that groups aren’t as reliant on their Windwalker or their melee to do so, but anyone who’s done Belo’ren, Rotmire, or Mythic+ may know that isn’t really the case.
The example that is frequently given is that Warriors can cast Pummel during Bladestorm and while this isn’t a perfect 1 to 1 relation, it is clearly something that CAN be done, so we just have to ask why it hasn’t been done yet. It’s not uncommon for a Windwalker to spend 20-30% of a fight channeling Fists of Fury, and since it is our hardest hitting ability, it feels extra punishing if you have to interrupt during it. Windwalker already can use many abilities while channeling Celestial Conduit, so clearly it is not a matter of ability.
Obviously, EVERYONE knows that DPS wins games but mechanics wins Championships, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.
Zenith Stomp and Mastery
Anyone who has played Windwalker for long knows that bugs are class fantasy, and while there are fewer bugs with the loss of Storm, Earth, and Fire, that doesn’t mean that the spec is bug-free. Some of the bugs that were found in Beta have been fixed, but many still haven’t been. When Zenith Stomp was added, it was quickly discovered that although there is a Cooldown Manager buff for tracking it with the rest of the Mastery: Combo Strikes tracking, it doesn’t actually contribute to keeping your Mastery: Combo Strikes going. The spell’s damage benefits from your Mastery: Combo Strikes, but casting Zenith Stomp immediately after a Zenith Stomp doesn’t drop Mastery: Combo Strikes or Hit Combo. Similarly, casting Blackout Kick > Zenith Stomp > Blackout Kick will drop your Hit Combo and the second Blackout Kick won’t be effected by the Mastery: Combo Strikes damage bonus.
This hasn’t been all bad, as it has allowed Windwalkers to cast Zenith > Zenith Stomp > Zenith Stomp and unleash an absolutely insane amount of AOE damage over 3 seconds. This isn’t *technically* best practice for overall damage, but after spending so many years needing to stack up Mark of the Crane or other things to do maximum AOE damage and watching other classes just hit two buttons and shoot up the meters, I am not faulting anyone who is taking advantage of it while it is there.
This is probably one of the most obviously unintended things in years, but after it was noticed and reported instantly, it has stuck around long enough that I had started to assume that it was intended. It has been fixed in the 12.1 PTR.
What We Got
Patch Notes
Thankfully, we have a lovely Developer’s note to let us know what the design intention is. Going into Midnight, many specs got similar comments as Blizzard tried to manage the “burst arms race” that damage had turned into. Unfortunately, it had seemingly gotten worse during Season 1, so clearly they’re trying to take a more aggressive approach. Some of the things listed will obviously have the desired effect, decreasing the damage of Zenith Stomp and Celestial Conduit and decreasing the values in Weapon of Wind and Tigereye Brew will certainly decrease Windwalker burst. Increasing the damage of auto-attacks, Blackout Kick, and Tiger Palm will take some of that burst damage and spread it out.
The change to Dual Threat will likely keep 1-handed weapons relevant, which is good because there is a weapon from the new raid that has nice stats and a very nice looking cantrip and set bonus; Amanmuso.
The math people told me that the changes are a definitive decrease in burst, but within 1-2% in single target and AOE over a fight. Loss of burst is a hard thing to accurately gauge and many specs are also losing burst and having it put back into the sustained damage, so we won’t be able to get a good idea of if Windwalker “won” or “lost” these changes until after Season 2 comes out.
Tier Set
Now, if you thought to yourself that we’ve seen similar things in the past, you’d be right. However, if its worked before, why not work it again. I am all for additional synergy between abilities and the 4-set bonus giving Spinning Crane Kick some additional life should be a good thing. There’s not much interesting or inspiring about the tier set, and its strength relative to others won’t be clear for awhile, but it’s ABSOLUTELY better than the nothingburger we got in Season 1.
For clarification sake, the 2-set adds a 6th tick of damage at the start, so instead of 5 ticks over the duration, it deals 6 ticks, and the first one is for half damage. This does work with the 4-set bonus and things like Momentum Boost where the new first tick counts towards adding stacks. Like Momentum Boost, the 4-set works per damage event, so if you hit one target with 6 ticks then you’ll get all 6 stacks. If you hit 5 targets with 6 stacks you’ll still hit the 6 stack limit, just with the first tick. This is set up in a way to further minimize the chances that we want to cancel Fists of Fury early.
Defensive Help
We didn’t get any. Most specs didn’t but some did and Windwalker was not one of them. My best guess continues to be that the existence of Brewmaster makes them hesitant, but that is just a guess. It could be because they hate you specifically.
Conduit
While Celestial Conduit itself ate a nerf, I guess for the burst damage, the nerf to Zenith Stomp may mean that Conduit of the Celestials players will skip that talent in the class tree. This helps to clean up playing Conduit of the Celestials and give it a chance, at least for people who enjoy it. It will take some more time to figure out exactly where Conduit of the Celestials falls relative to Shado-pan, but my gut says it still doesn’t stand a chance. However, if Conduit of the Celestials remains the big burst spec and everyone’s big burst was lessened then maybe it has a chance. The nerf to Celestial Conduit‘s damage does mean that there is a decent chance that we use it just to trigger Heart of the Jade Serpent and then cancel it so that we can press other things. It’s likely that isn’t something that the designers will want us to be doing, but if no one is playing Conduit of the Celestials anyway, then it doesn’t really matter until it does.
Talent Tuning
There really wasn’t any changes to talents that make any difference. The nerfs to Zenith Stomp, Weapon of Wind, and Tigereye Brew and the buffs to Dual Threat and Temple Training are “technically” talent tuning, but they aren’t really going to open up many/any additional talent builds outside of the above chance that Conduit of the Celestials becomes physically playable again. I’d still really like to see Strike of the Windlord usable, or even replace Whirling Dragon Punch, but currently that isn’t likely to happen.
I don’t really have a great answer as to why we aren’t seeing any changes to diversify our talent choices, but my heart says that it’s probably a personnel problem and changing something that isn’t “broken” costs people and time that the suits don’t want to devote to it.
Quality of Life
Fists of Fury and Interrupts
This wasn’t changed, and I’m not sure we should hold our breath for it. All we can do is keep asking. Surely if we all stop casting Spear Hand Strike and interrupting Fists of Fury and inting all our raids and dungeons then Blizzard will have to do something… right?
Zenith Stomp and Mastery
Here’s the one thing that we wanted that we actually got. Currently on the PTR, Zenith Stomp now contributes to keeping Hit Combo and Mastery: Combo Strikes going, so you cannot cast it back to back anymore without dropping Hit Combo. Similarly you can cast things like Blackout Kick on either side without worry. While it was fun while it lasted, I am not going to complain too much about things working the way they should.
Conclusion
If you’re looking at the list of things we wanted and pointing out that we got very few of them, or really just one… you’d be right. Clearly a lot of our big “wants” weren’t achieved, and our biggest “NEED” of defensive help continues to haunt us all. We did get some of the things that we wanted and the other things that we got weren’t bad.
Because Blizzard is trying to cut back on the burst that some specs do, any prognosis for where Windwalker will fall compared to other specs is even more difficult than under normal circumstances where it is already nearly impossible this far out. Our tier set should be decent, and we managed to be pretty good in Season 1 despite an insultingly poor tier set.
Damage should be fine, mobility will still be exceptional, but survivability currently looks like it will continue to be a HUGE struggle. We’ll probably have the damage for the highest keys and most cutting edge raids, but the ceiling of what a Windwalker can do will continue to be kept lower because of how hard it will be to survive.
The big positive is that nothing that is listed as changing will really lessen what has been, in my opinion, one of the most fun seasons to play Windwalker. Fingers crossed that Blizzard hears our plight and helps us out with some of the above defensive assistance.
