So if you’ve been paying attention for the past many months, you may have seen many references to problems with Windwalkers. Surprisingly, many of these problems can be traced to one source… Blackout Kick. Yes, Blackout Kick, the ability that seemed innocuous for most of the time that Windwalker has been a spec, used mainly to dump Chi or when there were no other options. It has now become a force of evil, messing up much of the mechanics we have all come to enjoy about Windwalker.
Dramatics aside, nearly all of the complaints or concerns that people have voiced so far in the Pre-Patch, and really going back to the start of Alpha for BfA, are the result of Blackout Kick being too strong relative to other abilities. Although seemingly a good thing that Blackout Kick does a lot of damage, it has a cascading affect that changes much about the class we love. This is something that we’ve been reporting for months now, so this article is meant to consolidate all the affects that this has and hope for a positive change.
Baselines
To look at these issues, the first thing to do is to look at the numbers behind the abilities;
- Windwalker Monk (http://bfa.wowhead.com/spell=137025/windwalker-monk) – Modifies nearly all abilities by -27% (Effect #1 and #2); plus extra modifiers to specific abilities relevant to these discussions; +26% to Rising Sun Kick, Blackout Kick, Tiger Palm (Effect #5); +140% to Spinning Crane Kick (Effect #8); and +50% to Blackout Kick (Effect #9).
- Tiger Palm – 27% base AP * +26% (Effect #5) * -27% (Effect #1) = 26.78% AP
- Blackout Kick – 77% base AP * +50% (Effect #9) * +26% (Effect #5) * -27% (Effect #1) = 114.5% AP
- Rising Sun Kick – 115% base AP * +26% (Effect #5) * +70% (Rising Sun Kick) * -27% (Effect #1) = 193.96% AP
- Whirling Dragon Punch – 248.7% base AP per target * -27% (Effect #2) = 195.83% AP per target
- Fists of Fury – 5 hits of 120.75% base AP * -27% (Effect #2) = 603.75% AP
- Spinning Crane Kick – 40% base AP * +140% (Effect #8) * -27% (Effect #2) = 75.59% AP per target
- Mark of the Crane – +10% damage to Spinning Crane Kick per stack
- Chi Wave – 4 hits of 14.2% AP * -27% (Effect #1) = 44.72% AP
- Chi Burst – 46% AP * -27% (Effect #1) = 36.22% AP per target
Rising Sun Kick
This is, without a doubt, the biggest thing that people are starting to notice, and it boils down to this; Rising Sun Kick does less damage per Chi than Blackout Kick.
Because, outside of burst windows (aka, most of the time), the limiting factor of what we can do is Chi, so we aim to use that Chi as effectively as possible. This means that we prioritize our abilities by the damage they do per Chi used, which results in Blackout Kick being a higher priority than Rising Sun Kick. Even when you consider that Rising Sun Kick costs two chi, so getting rid of it would equate to two Blackout Kick, and to do so may even require you to use Blackout Kick back to back, so the second one doesn’t benefit from Mastery, you still need over 54% Mastery for Rising Sun Kick to do more damage considering the cooldown reduction that Blackout Kick provides to Fists of Fury. That’s a high amount of Mastery in Antorus, outside of Argus, and certainly will be at the start of Battle for Azeroth.
With this realization comes the horrible occurrence that everyone is logging in to find; outside of very specific circumstances, burst windows,to enable Whirling Dragon Punch, or when near Chi cap and 2x Blackout Kick won’t be enough, you don’t cast Rising Sun Kick. The ability that Windwalkers have had for years, that has retained its spot at or near the top of the priority list, is now relegated to a Chi dump or an ability used to proc other abilities.
Mastery
As you can see above, because Rising Sun Kick isn’t used as often, we replace it with two Blackout Kick. Since one of those Blackout Kick isn’t affected by Mastery, this cuts down on the effectiveness of Mastery as a stat. Moreover, it actively encourages a playstyle that not only allows for, but encourages us to ignore the Mastery mechanic that dominated the way Windwalker was played for all of Legion, and is one of the primary reasons that people enjoyed Windwalker as a spec.
This would be an even bigger deal if Hit Combo was still the chosen talent, but even though its not, its still a huge departure from the playstyle that Windwalker had all of Legion. It basically takes the core mechanic that made Windwalkers unique to any spec that has ever played, and took it away. Now, if it can be spammed; you spam it (within reason) mostly ignoring Mastery, and if it can’t be spammed; it benefits from Mastery anyway unless you did something real crazy.
Windwalker is no stranger to changes like this between expansions, as we’ve had plenty of them. But this is the first one that seems directly counter to what came before. Although the Mastery hasn’t changed directly, how we feel about it has. Its gone from “NEVER BREAK MASTERY OMGWTFRUDOIN” in most situations to “Meh, Mastery is nice, but if you need to ignore it, not a big deal”.
Between this and the Rising Sun Kick change, we’ve had over 200 questions and comments in the Wind-Questions channel of Discord in the last 24 hours alone, not because its hard to understand, but its so different from two days ago that everyone needs to double check that they read it correctly.
Chi Burst
This is something that most people haven’t considered, but the strength of Blackout Kick affects the first talent tier, specifically Chi Burst vs Chi Wave. This is because Chi Burst gives you 1 Chi in single target every 30s and Chi Wave does not. Chi Wave gives you 44.72% AP every 15 seconds, compared to Chi Burst‘s 36.22% AP every 30 seconds, so obviously Chi Wave should be better in single target since it equates to 89.44% AP every 30 seconds, compared to 36.22% from Chi Burst, right?
WRONG! Here comes Blackout Kick to screw up even more things.
That extra chi that comes from Chi Burst directly translates into an extra Blackout Kick every 30 seconds, since you already have enough Chi for all your other abilities that require Chi (which is really just Fists of Fury at this point). That means you add Blackout Kick‘s 114.5% AP to every Chi Burst, meaning that the real competition is 89.44% every 30 seconds with Chi Wave, to Chi Burst‘s 150.72%, and its not even close.
If you are astute, you may have noticed something interesting, because you may have noticed that because of Blackout Kick‘s 114.5% AP, Chi Burst could do 0 damage on its own, and the extra Chi would equate to more damage than Chi Wave. Obviously this means there’s more to this discrepancy than Blackout Kick‘s damage, but it takes what would be a small discrepancy and makes it HUGE. Not having Chi Wave also cuts down on the other casts we could weave in between Blackout Kick, furthering the situations that we just hit it twice.
Spinning Crane Kick
So this problem really builds upon the lack of caring about Mastery, and centers around what we do inside Serenity. Historically, during Serenity we would prioritize our hardest hitting abilities, without regard for their Chi cost, since they were all free. This means that during Serenity is the only time we use Rising Sun Kick except as a Chi dump when talented into that. It also means that during Serenity we, historically, have alternated between Spinning Crane Kick and Blackout Kick to keep the benefit of Mastery.
However, all that changed when the Blackout Kick nation attacked. Now that Blackout Kick does 114.5% AP per cast, and Spinning Crane Kick does a paltry 83.15% AP with 1 stack and 1 target, you need at least 37.7% Mastery for Spinning Crane Kick to have a chance, and when you add in the fact that using Blackout Kick can easily lead to another Rising Sun Kick and/or Fists of Fury inside of Serenity, that change goes *POOF*.
Although this is certainly not as egregious a situation as ignoring Rising Sun Kick, its still a departure from what was the usual occurrences in Legion.
Conclusion/Solution
So after reading all this, you may be saying to yourself, “But Babs, how could all these problems that are bound to turn people away from Windwalker, if they haven’t already… how could they all be because of Blackout Kick?” And to that I say “Effect #9”.
Effect #9 on the Windwalker Aura; Windwalker Monk, increases Blackout Kicks damage by 50% and is basically the cause of most, if not all, of the problems that people are seeing as they wake up to play the new Windwalker.
If you look at the above concerns, if you remove the 50% damage increase, Rising Sun Kick becomes better per Chi, so it stops being ignored. Because of that, you don’t ignore Mastery to spam Blackout Kick. With Blackout Kick doing less damage, the gap between Chi Burst and Chi Wave goes down to around 14% AP every 30 seconds which may be low enough that we go back to Chi Wave in order to help us keep our Mastery benefit on all our abilities. Lastly, Spinning Crane Kick then does slightly more damage per cast than Blackout Kick, so we would alternate them during Serenity, but not enough to use Spinning Crane Kick in single target outside of Serenity.
Obviously Windwalker will need some damage to compensate for the loss of, what has become, a HUGE source of damage, but since we’re currently at -27% for Windwalker Monk, I think we have some room to go up without being crazy strong.
I am concerned that because of this drastic change to what many people credit with being THE reason they love Windwalker, that the spec population will lose all of the ground it gained by being so strong in Antorus.
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Yeah. lets nerf ww to shit. Has been a long time since it’s been down there (not)
If only you read the whole article
Reading is hard for some people. This article clearly wasn’t about nerfing it, it was about correcting issues in the bfa gameplay. Since doing the optimal rotation in bfa would mean playing ww while disregrading mastery in many situations as well as not using RSK aside from trying to proc whiring dragon punch. The mastery is what made it fun for me for years, please fix! Thank you for the great article.
Your solution seems so simple.
I wasn’t even aware that BoK has its own aura. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of their ‘lazy aura tuning’ concept. Imo the devs should first get the balance between all abilities straight and then they may tweak the whole of them with their aura.
To be honest, after all my exp on Beta with m+ and now the first tests on live with the prepatch. I must say that WW is “weaker”. But he´s still strong enough to be first in dps rangking even if rogues or arms are in the raid. You only have to know how to play (and hope that the others fail sometimes) 😉 but however, I still love my WW
Not going to lie, Windwalker in Legion has been by far my single most loved spec I’ve ever played in WoW. Seeing it so drastically butchered (not just in the damage rotation but losing most utility/self healing) has made me question if I’m even going to level the class in BFA. Hope the situation improves but even the talent layout is a bit gross for my taste.
Really don’t like the way WW plays right now. I couldn’t care less if we are top of the meters if the gameplay is not enjoyable.
You’re right in saying that the mastery is what a lot of people enjoy about the class and it is sad to see it diminished like this. At the end of the day I hope blizz can change the damage of BoK, because the spec that I enjoyed so much in Legion is being put in the backseat for BfA with how things are going.
This is why people leave the game. Blizzard decides to butcher the least played class in the game.
I agree with everyone else here. This isn’t a question of performance, it’s a question of design, and the way Windwalker plays right now has none of mechanical flow or thematic flavour of the Legion version. The solution is so simple, and I don’t know why Blizzard hasn’t addressed it. I’d even take a performance hit, if it meant getting back the spec I enjoyed so much.
Thanks for the read. While you correctly point out the power difference in Blackout Kick and Rising Sun Kick it does not take into effect the Azerite powers… which seems to be something blizzard could address but has decided to bake in another issue by doing it this way. This is clearly a horrible oversight on their part /sarcasm.
This power imbalance is bad and is going to train new monks into horrible rotation habits. Hopefully they at least rise RSK damage to be equal to BK in terms of chi used.
I am also finding out that I am having trouble keeping a solid rotation going. I have had to go with interesting talent choices. My hope is after existing legendaries fall off and new Azerite powers take over I will find a new grove.
I am not a huge fan of relying on Tiger Palm, Blackout Kick to fill gaps in my rotation. It creates huge dps drops.
These Azerite Talents are going to be huge in terms of helping fix this:
Sunrise Technique Attacking a target with Rising Sun Kick causes your damaging melee abilities to deal 49 additional Physical damage to that target for 15 sec.
Swift Roundhouse Blackout Kick increases the damage of your next Rising Sun Kick by 74, stacking up to 2 times.
Babs, what do you think of the amount of GCDs we have to use before we can start doing damage? Specifically on the opener, where at least 3 of the first 5 abilities will be SEF, TOD and on certain cases EE, all with GCD (and a long one), while the other two will be most likely a tiger palm and xuen/RJW or something.
It’s not great, but just takes some getting used to. It’s survivable.
Yeah, because sometimes i feel WW atm are very close to the “Fury Warrior situation” when the GCD changes where first introduced (had to activate battlecry, bloodbath and avatar before doing any damange)
I am actually fine with ww current state. It might be weird to not use rsk on cd but ww as a spec is still enjoyable imo. Yes they should change the dmg amplifiers like you stated, but i dont see it nearly as dramatic
Great work.
for me, it is still not understandable why my RSK deals this low dmg amount…
i dont get it why blizzard cant fix such shit…
i mean, just give the rsk the artifact trait and the visual and it is fine.
i mean… in comparison the DH DD… GOT NEW spell animations… after 2 years?!
i dont get it.
i guess blizz just applies the following rule: if it is not played, then we dont fix it…
thats very, very disappointing in my opinion, because they always say “we want our products to be the best”
Heyho, using your data from this current and your other article, 2x BoK would deal 35,04(BASE)+39,2%(FoF-CDR) = 74,24% AP more compared to RSK, requiring a value of mastery around 38,2%, which is still reachable right know.
Any mistakes regarding my calculation?
(CDR-DMG-Source:http://www.peakofserenity.com/2018/05/10/windwalker-bfa-theorycrafting-3-questions/#comment-2727)
That article uses some old numbers, so it may not be applicable anymorr
It was mainly my fault because i forgot to take -27% damage multiplier for CDR into calculation, used old FoF value and also treated both BoK’s without mastery my main problem is that i don’t know how u reach 54%.
If I calculate without CDR on FoF it’s 44,2% and if I calculate with CDR on FoF it’s 125,2%.
My formula with old FoF values(new one should be even higher if I’m not mistaken:
1x BoK*Mastery + 1xBoK + 28,616 [your old FoF-CDRdmg for 4,8 BoK’s (94,08% / 4,8)*2{2xBoK}*0,73 {-27%Multiplier}]
(114,5+28,616)*X +114,5 = 193,96*X
114,5 = (193,96 – 114,5 -28,616)*X
114,5 = 50,844*X
114,5/50,844 = X
X = 2,251986
P.S.: Currently my own FoF-CDR-Calculation (without haste) 24-4(Channeltime) = 20/2 = 10 ( each BoK = 5% CDR => 5% DMG)
603,75%/10 = 60,375% leading to 60,375% for 2 BoK’s via reduction?
Or is it necessary to take GCD also into account leading to a maximum of 10 Second CDR via BoK with infinite Chi? Im really confused here.^^
The “Azerith Armor will fix it” argument, is not very satisfying. The Azerith traits are supposed to add to a rotation, and not to fix it.
The base Rotation is basically broken an counter intuitive atm. For example: Why should BoK even reduce RSK’s cooldown, if you aren’t supposed to use it?
I honestly was a bit hearthbroken, when i found out how this spec is supposed to be played now.
If this doesn’t get a fix, I’ll have to consider if I realy wanna stick to this spec :/
And just to be clear. We are talking about mechanics/rotation, and not damage meters
Well,there are some bugs around ww monk like the legendary head,sef’s clones still not listen to you correctly etc.There is something though that i am furstrating about that (i know it wont matter in bfa much) but the fact i am sitting on the shit with karma and do as much damage as i did in the past 1 min with a simple ability its really weird. Like also i feel like in total the damage from all abilities is kinda too low compared to other classes,and also as for the BK well i dont know like they might gonna change it or its gonna scale a bit less in 120.
The PvE rotation is the least is my concerns. FoF stun gone, SotWL gone, incap nerfed, port nerfed, leg sweep nerfed, karma trait gone…. It’s the playstyle options in PvP that worry me. But everyone seems to be focusing on PvE rotations…. Feelsbadman:-( RIP my favourite class
Well this is kinda a PvE focused site, and the PvE population is larger than the PvP one.
Uh, what about the PvP changes?
1. FoF stun gone
2. SotWL burst gone
3. Incap nerfed
4. Port nerfed
5. Leg Sweep nerfed
WW playstyle is dead. I am sure the PvE rotation will be fixed by tuning. It is a non issue. Please focus more on the fact that they butchered WW in PvP in feedback…
Like I said to the other comment, this is mainly a PvE focused site, and PvE content and discussion is our first priority, as it always has been.
Sry, I thought my first comment never got posted. I get that.. I just wish someone with influence would mention the PvP changes. When Blizzard ask for feedback it’s always PvE focused. I am kinda shared my favourite class will be ruined next expansion. Anyways – sorry for the negativity. You guys are doing a great job!!:-)