Chart and priority updated to assume full traits. If you don’t have 3/3 in the traits effecting these damaging abilities, your priority may be slightly different. You can use the spreadsheet in the menu above to cater it to your character.
The numbers in this article are outdated, but the idea is not. Use the numbers and chart here as an example, use the spreadsheet to find the breaking points for your character.
Determining the Priority
There are constant questions about how the number of targets and stacks of Cyclone Strikes. To determine this, we first have to determine how we rank all the abilities into the attack priority. As it stands, Windwalkers are not currently restricted by the global cooldown, there are free globals in our rotation as we cannot generate enough Energy and Chi to fill every second of the fight. Because the limiting factor is Energy, and thus Chi, abilities are generally ranked by their Damage Per Chi (DPChi) with non-Chi spending abilities fitting in based on Damage. To allow for ability scaling, you can look at it as Attack Power Per Chi. Without including Spinning Crane Kick in the priority, Windwalker single target (and multi target) looks like this:
- Strike of the Windlord (~1685% AP/Chi)
- Whirling Dragon Punch (1245% AP)
- Fists of Fury (875% AP/Chi)
- Rising Sun Kick (455% AP/Chi)
- Blackout Kick (385% AP/Chi)
- Chi Wave (346% AP)
This is pretty close to the optimal rotation we’ve found through sims, which you can find in the Rotation section of our guides. Spinning Crane Kick deals 133.3% AP per Chi with no stacks and hitting one target. For each additional target hit, Spinning Crane Kick gains 100% of its damage and each stack of Cyclone Strikes you have when cast gains you 50% damage per stack. As it gains AP, it moves up in the priority. For example, to move above Rising Sun Kick it needs to deal more than 455% AP/Chi, which can be accomplished a variety of ways: 3 targets and 1 stack, 1 target and 5 stacks, 2 targets and 2 stacks, or any combination higher than those.
Movin’ On Up
To move ahead of Fists of Fury, it needs to out scale it through Cyclone Strikes, since Fists of Fury also gains 100% damage per target hit. At 10 targets, Fists of Fury deals 8750% AP/Chi, and Spinning Crane Kick does 1333% AP per Chi, plus an additional 50% per stack, so with 10 stacks it does 7980% AP/Chi total. It’s not until at least 12 targets and at least 11 stacks that you see Spinning Crane Kick catch up to Fists of Fury‘s 10,500% AP/Chi, with 10,374% AP/Chi of its own. Anything higher than those numbers will result in Spinning Crane Kick doing more damage per chi.
** It is worth noting that because Spinning Crane Kick and Whirling Dragon Punch are AOE all around the Windwalker, and abilities like Fists of Fury and Strike of the Windlord are a cone in front, it is easier to hit multiple targets with Spinning Crane Kick and Whirling Dragon Punch. **
Here’s how it shakes out, for Spinning Crane Kick to beat out each ability, and move ahead of it in the priority you need at least:
- Whirling Dragon Punch – 16 stacks, regardless of targets
- Fists of Fury – 13 stacks with 3 targets or more OR 14 stacks with 2 targets OR 16 stacks with 1 target
- Rising Sun Kick – 4 targets, regardless of stacks OR 3 targets and 2 stacks OR 9 stacks, regardless of targets
- Blackout Kick/Chi Wave – 3 targets regardless of stacks OR 2 targets and two stacks OR 6 stacks, regardless of targets
- Strike of the Windlord – Various requirements depending on number of targets hit, the more target hit, the less stacks needed.
So, if you meet those requirements, then Spinning Crane Kick moves into that spot in the rotation. There can be some adjustments for artifact traits, but in general, those requirements hold.
Planning for Spinning Crane Kick
So now that we know what it takes for Spinning Crane Kick to move up in the priority. But there’s more to it.
Windwalker is all about planning ahead and thinking things through and making decisions several seconds before you have to press those buttons. This is important when choosing whether to focus on Spinning Crane Kick or to fit Fists of Fury in. Because Fists of Fury has a 3-4s channel, this would equate to 3-4 stacks, or 9-12 stacks during Storm, Earth, and Fire. Is not using Fists of Fury at lower stacks worth the benefit from gaining those stacks to get a stronger Spinning Crane Kick faster, rather than using Fists of Fury before you build more stacks?
The answer is pretty simple: because casting Fists of Fury effectively delays any stack-creating, if you would hit 12 or more stacks during the 3-4s you would be channeling Fists of Fury, then skip Fists of Fury and use those 3 Chi to cast Spinning Crane Kick. As an example on a fight like Iskar or Beastlord Darmac:
You’re focusing on the boss single target, so you have 1 stack and one target. Adds spawn. If you have Storm, Earth, and Fire available, and 3 Chi. You can cast Fists of Fury or Spinning Crane Kick with those 3 Chi. If there are at least 12 targets total, you can pop Storm, Earth, and Fire and uses Spinning Crane Kick, then Tiger Palm > Blackout Kick > Tiger Palm to get back to 3 Chi, using 4 GCD. This gives you the maximum of 12 stacks in 4 GCD so that you 5th CD can be used for a 12 stack Spinning Crane Kick. If you had used Fists of Fury, then that would have delayed the stronger Spinning Crane Kick by the duration of the channel before you could then generate enough Chi.
Basically, Fists of Fury is strong in both single target and AOE, Spinning Crane Kick is only strong in AOE. If you delay Fists of Fury in favor of the more immediately stronger Spinning Crane Kick, Fists of Fury will still be strong later. If you delay Spinning Crane Kick for Fists of Fury then Spinning Crane Kick may not be stronger later.
Overall, Spinning Crane Kick is an ability that will be strong for most and insane for the select few who really get a good feel for how to use it instinctively. To use it ideally requires a strong knowledge of raid mechanics as well as your raid’s capabilities to know how many Spinning Crane Kick you can fit in before the additional targets are gone.
Hopefully, this answers more questions than it creates. As always you can find us on Discord to answer questions, and if you liked what you read don’t hesitate to scroll down or to the top and subscribe and support WtW.
Brilliant post thanks!
So is Spinning Crane Kick now apart of our Single Target Rotation?
It can be with enough stacks
Man this really has me questioning if I am playing windwalker correct
In my opinion, Cyclone Strikes on its own makes WW the hardest melee spec to play perfectly.
Even when you have infinite time to asses the situation and make the ideal plan it’s still very hard to see what the optimal line of play would be, let alone in a real in game situation where you have to decide on the fly in a matter of seconds.
I would love you (Babylonius) to try and formulate the ideal line of play in the next situation (and the reasoning behind it):
First trash pack of the instance consisting of 5 mobs, close together, you know the fight will last 30 seconds.
Btw thanks for this wonderful blog!
That’s a relatively simple scenario, you follow the priority and use SCK to dump chi rather than using BoK, and only use RSK so you can WDP.
Concerning the 12+ stack, you seem confident that the SEF clones will do their job well, because i didn’t had the time to try this on Iskar for example, does it really work like this? (SEF>TP>Bok>TP>Bok == 4*3 = 12 target hits?).
Can you reach for 17+ stacks like you said, and are their some tweaks to help the AI of SEF do it’s job properly?
Thx a lot for your answer and for the great post!
Concerning mark of the crane, clones do their job really well; they jump to a target on each spell, and if everything within range is tagged they’ll jump to the oldest debut of mark of the crane to refresh it.
However, to get 12 hits in 4 GCDs, you would need to swap targets yourself as well for maximum efficiency!
If you have doubts on how high mark of the crane can go, do the Broken Shores scenario. Final stage will let you get a glimpse of how high this damage can go.
Wow, this means that we drop RSK (besides to unlock WDP), in favor of SCK in as little as a two target cleave situation. Crazy.
With two targets two stacks, if you have full artifact traits for RSK and not the SCK one, RSK still does a bit more damage per chi used than SCK; it is also worth using for WDP conditions.
However, the sole fact that they are close at 2 targets despite half our artifact being about RSK is quite impressive!
So, does this mean we will completely drop out bok/cw when we can hit 2 targets with sck? Because that changes our playstyle by a mile.
For example on fights like Council in HFC when fighting Gurtogg/Jubei’thos.
Yes it does change our play style by a lot.
As soon as you have several targets, SCK becomes a very relevant part of the rotation. Chi Wave is still in since it’s free and with SCK as one of your primary spenders, you’re gonna 1) have lots of free GCDs and 2) need something to put between Tiger Palms to generate more chi.
We can’t answer every specific case. For instance on hellfire high council, if you leave your clones around, one will be hitting only Dia with SCK, while the other two will hit 2 targets; This means an average of 3 tags, 1.66 targets… Obviously we won’t take care of spreadsheeting all the nice cases but this article should help clarify for those who want the “why” of using SCK so much.
Not completely, you’ll still use Chi Wave and Chi Burst because they’re free to fit between TP so you can generate Chi without dropping Hit Combo. And BoK will be used for free combo breakers and to help quickly generate stacks of Mark of the Crane. You can still use BoK to not break HC between TP, but using Chi Wave/Burst, FSK, or even tapping CJL will be more Chi efficient, so more DPS.
Sorry if it was mentioned before, but is the spreadsheet assuming full artifact traits? (if not, will you be making another spreadsheet when legion arrives?)
It is not assuming any artifact traits. Once you have full artifacts all abilities to up roughly the same power, 15%. I have no intention on making a spreadsheet for each combination of traits. I may release the full spreadsheet eventually, as it has some other nice stuff, but that’s low on the to do list right now
How do spinning kicks stack i.e. in being higher priority compared to other skills relate to RSK vs unlocking WDP? Meaning – 12 stack might out damage RSK single target, but without casting RSK you cant unlock WDP.
At 12 stacks SCK becomes better than FoF, so you won’t cast both FoF and RSK to use WDP. Before that point you’d still want to use RSK to facilitate WDP.
Ah yea misstated – its already at 3 stack better than rsk. Thanks
Thanks for your post !
I have a question for pex 110 on legion, it’s better to pex in Windwalker spec or Brewmaster spec ?
because i saw manys forum say tank are better for pex ( Your dps is not important, how many mobs you can tag at once is. Legion allows up to 5 people to tag one mob at once, get AoE talents and tag everything you can. Tanks are great for this.)
WW have poor great range AOE maybe chi wave ? but it’s random …
Usually many players like tank specs for large pulls during leveling; however, many mist weavers have enjoyed leveling as a Windwalker.
Windwalker gets a really smooth leveling thanks mainly to the artifact’s ability, Strike of the Windlord. It’s extremely powerful and allows you to destroy leveling mobs every 40 seconds on AoE. Besides that, sustain is really decent, touch of karma/touch of death give you a lot of help on tougher mobs, flying serpent kick and wind walking aura are very good as well…
I’ll be leveling as a windwalker for sure and have my off spec Brewmaster ready for dungeons if I’m asked to tank for my guild.
i see, only statue for pulling lot of mobs is very good but i dont like pex with BM … i think you have right thanks !
De rien 😉
About this part
“If you have Storm, Earth, and Fire available, and 3 Chi
If there are at least 12 targets total, you can pop Storm, Earth, and Fire and uses Spinning Crane Kick, then Tiger Palm > Blackout Kick > Tiger Palm to get back to 3 Chi, using 4 GCD. ”
I don’t understand how can you get 12 stacks from using tiger palm , blackout , tiger palm, doesn’t this equal to 9 stacks?
isn’t better to use rsk (to spend 2 of the 3 chi and get 3 stacks, then tiger palm black out tiger palm to get the rest 9 stacks then spinning crane kick?
It depends on how long the targets will live. If you’ll have time for only one SCK, then doing it that way will work. However if you have time for a second then using BoK and ignoring RSK will give you another Chi so that you only need to TP once before using SCK again.
@ Babylonius
Sorry for asking, but is there a reason you have engineering and enchanting as professions? Or are you gonna switch in Legion?
I have them bc I like them. Professions don’t provide any direct benefit to specs
Ah okay thanks 🙂
Would it be a problem to have two crafting professions in legion? I was getting inscription and engineering, but im unsure if im gonna miss mats that are bop with herb.
I have an alt with mining and herb.
You should be fine with two crafting professions if you have the gold to support them. Right now I’ve been focusing on my enchanting because my engineering is way too expensive. If you have an alt you can farm with then you should be goood
@Babylonius
The above was to you.
@Babylonius
Aha, so there is no mining or herb does not have any bop ?
Not that I know of. Wowhead has profession guides, I recommend those
If you were at max SCK stacks with zero chi, would you consider TP, CJL, TP, SCK, TP, SCK? Replacing blackout kick with CJL seems like it would be worth it. It would give you 6 chi instead of 5, allowing you to perform 2 SCKs instead of just 1.
Yes, that’s theoretically the best way to maximize your damage.
It looks like we might be losing CJL as a free Hit Combo filler. PTR has CJL costing 20 energy on cast and 20 e/sec after that. With BoK essentially costing 25 energy, I assume it’ll be better than using CJL to keep Hit Combo up if FSK and Chi Wave are on CD? Will it still be better than simply letting Hit Combo drop?
You still don’t want to let HC drop. You will just need to plan ahead a little more since there won’t be the cushion of being able to CJL.
hmmm, so you have to try to hit as many targets as possible to get stacks then use SCK? Sorry if the question is dumb Im a new player.