Disclaimer
Everything on this page is subject to change at any point due to theorycrafting, tuning, or us simply missing something or discovering something new that we didn’t know before. React to this information on your own volition.
If there is anything that you feel was missed in this guide, that is because it is best done through the tools on Raidbots once 9.1 comes out.
Changes
What this means
Covenants
Currently, Kyrian will remain the strongest Covenant for general purposes, single target or burst damage, raiding, and PvP. Night Fae and Necrolord will be viable options for players who want to focus on AOE or sustained damage and Mythic+, however both will likely fall behind Kyrian in high Mythic+ that are organized and strategized around large bursts of damage.
Realistically, due to the relative difficulty of maximizing Weapons of Order compared to Bonedust Brew or Faeline Stomp, many players will see better performance as Necrolord or Night Fae over Kyrian. The gap between these three covenants is close enough that player skill will make the difference. Do not delude yourself by picking a Covenant that you’re not skilled in, costing yourself damage.
Kyrian players may be switching between Mikanikos and Pelagos at max Renown depending on the content; Mikanikos for single target and Pelagos for AOE. This is something that will just come down to “sim it” for your character and where you’re at with Renown and gear.
Legendaries
Reminder: You will not be able to craft any new legendaries until 48 renown, which will take 3 or 4 weeks into 9.1.
- Night Fae will use Faeline Harmony for all situations.
- Venthyr can use Sinister Teachings OR Invoker’s Delight, they’re currently within 0.5% of each other in sims.
- Necrolord will use Invoker’s Delight for everything.
- Kyrian will use Invoker’s Delight for everything.
If you are using Invoker’s Delight, or any of the new legendaries, you’ll want to craft them in a non-Domination slot:
- Cloak for Invoker’s Delight
- Wrist or Finger for Sinister Teachings
- Belt for Faeline Harmony
- Legs for Call to Arms
- Neck for Bountiful Brew
Domination Gems
For more information on how this new system works, check out the wowhead page for it: https://www.wowhead.com/guides/shards-of-domination-overview-effects-sockets-rune-word-set-bonuses
All classes want all 5 Domination slots. For Windwalker you want these gems:
- Shard of Dyz (Unholy Shard)
- Shard of Zed (Unholy Shard)
- Shard of Oth (Unholy Shard) for Raid / Shard of Kyr (Frost Shard) for M+
- Shard of Cor (Frost Shard)
- Shard of Bek (Blood Shard)
This will give you access to the Unholy set bonus:
Chaos Bane – While inside the Maw or Torghast, your spells and abilities have a chance to drain a Soul Fragment from your target, granting you 10 Primary stat for 30 sec and stacking up to 15 times. When you reach 15 stacks, unleash Chaos Bane, dealing 1500 Shadow damage split between nearby enemies and granting you 300 Primary stat for 15 sec.
You’ll want to upgrade Shard of Dyz, Shard of Zed, and Shard of Oth equally before moving on to Shard of Cor and then Shard of Bek and Shard of Kyr.
Everything Else
There’s no other changes to any aspect of Windwalkers other than what is above. Damage should be fine, low in pure single target but high in AOE.
If there is anything that you feel was missed in this guide, that is because it is best done through the tools on Raidbots once 9.1 comes out.
Invokers Delight on Cloak? How?
In 9.1 you can craft it on cloak.
what do u mean cloak for Invoker’s Delight it can only be worn in head or shoulders?
In 9.1 they’re adding cloak to those options so that people can avoid domination slots.
Babylonius, why need to avoid the domination slots? Can explain about it please
Because you want to put domination gems into those slots and legendaries don’t have slots for them
So I have Invokers Delight on my head slot and it’s not fully upgraded yet. I assume it would be recommended to save my soul ash and gold for the cloak and not bother upgrading the head slot further right now?
That entirely depends on if you want more DPS now or more gold/ash later
Hey Babs, ty for the quick summary on 9.1. Great content as usual!
Considering we can get high Ilvl legs from KT with juicy Vers/Crit, would it not be better to craft the “Call to Arms” Kyrian legendary on feet instead of legs?
NVM; stupido me.. DS is on feet aswell.. Mods pls delete #kekw
How does necro and fae compare in mythic plus? If I just want to pump as much aoe as possible.
They’re both strong, NF with the new legendary is slightly stronger
I heared that you can use the same domination gem multiple times if they are different upgrade tiers. Will this change the Gem selection?
It depends on how if effects the set bonuses, I haven’t seen anyone really talk about that.
You think WW still gonna have a spot in raid this tier?
Yes
Hello, is that mean the top players will probablu play NF and Necro instead of Kyrian now ?
No, it means the top players will probably play Kyrian, maybe Necrolord, but that most players should just pick those because the top players do when they may perform better with other Covenents.
Will NF Legendary rival the Kyrian covenant + Invokers in PVP?
Definitely not
so according to simc in early raid Kyrian still better than Necro but less when Tier 27 ？
That is what it currently says, yes
I didnt play much 9.0.5 but I did save all my soul ash and crafted my invokers delight on back slot(233) glad I procrastinated lol.
saved all my soul ash and crafted 9.1 im lazy but it paid off, one of the few not cucked by leggo crisis
IS the stats still Vers/cCrit?
Probably
“You want to avoid having legendaries on these 5 slots.”
I would say thats not true. Legendaries on Helm, Chest, Shoulders will be still stronger that socketed ones. Legendaries simply would have higher ilvl and will give way more boost to your stats in general. You just need 3 slots to get Bonus and thats it. The rest 2 are optional and its completely up to you. It comes to the choice between +% more main and secondary stats OR two bonuses that under certain circumstances increase you damage for +2%. Again IMO.
Im just not a fan of ”you obligatory have to do this and this, otherwise you suck” thats not true, and previous patch was good example for that.
You can not be a fan of it, but if you have a legendary taking up a domination slot then you’ll be losing damage, we’ve run the numbers.
Hey Babs,
If you only have acess to heroic 239ilvl domination pieces is 252ilvl vault gear better?
For m+ where the set bonus don’t apply and only the individual socket bonuses works
That’s what sims are for
Isn’t it better to upgrade Unholy gems equally (assuming you have all three Unholy gems and Helm+2 other slots), rather than upgrading Dyz/Kor/Bek equally?
Yeah, I have to change that when I get a chance since we know more about how they work
Hello ! Sorry but can you explain why please ? I think i don’t understand why we need to upgrade them equally. And i’m little lost with all of this stuff. The bonus set workes only inside the Maw right ? Does it better if the three all runes are high level ? Isn’t it better to max the dps runes (Dyz/Beck/Kor) ? Like that for all contents you have some runes that give you some more DPS. To upgrade a rune at max level you need more or less two weeks of raid, in two weeks you probably can loot some domination slots, depends of your luck and team. So i really don’t know what is better, if you can help me a little to understand why you said that it will probably better to rank up the unholy runes equally. Thx very much in advance for your guidance.
If you raid, then you want to upgrade the unholy gems first because the set bonus scales with the level of the gems, and scales quickly, so you want to get that as quickly as possible.
But the bonus is more than 300 primary stats? I don’t know for the damages of the bonus set but some mates in ma guild have the 3 impies shard but they maxed only the Dyz rune and already have the 300 stats bonus with the two others runes lvl1. It will be more than 300 stats after max the two others runes ?
Ah no ok, i think i understand, you said me quickly so you will have more often the bonus of 300 stats if you up them equally. Thankyou very much for your answers. Have a nice day!
May i ask what the reason is that your prediction in terms of the best covernant for ww completly went wrong? Because mythic plus and raid wise all the world class ww decided to go necro over kyrian (including u). I am just curious what the exact reason for that is. Were the sims wrong?
It’s a few things, but mainly we weren’t able to predict how much better WW would be at blowing up adds on fights like Soulrender. So the fact that people would give up ST power to index into more AOE wasn’t something that was predictable, because it generally goes against the norm. People chose to lean into the strength rather than try to minimize the weakness.
Personally I switched because I kept messing up the WoO window in progression and NL was easier.