Monk Wishlists for Dragonflight Talent Tree - Brewmaster, Mistweaver, and Windwalker

Dragonflight Publié 11/07/2022 à 01:58 par Jaydaa

Monk Wishlists for the Dragonflight Talent TreesBrewmaster Monk Talent Tree WishlistIntroduction

Brewmaster Monk has been a part of World of Warcraft for nearly 10 years now, and it has spent a majority of the last decade as one of the strongest tanks in the game.

Brewmaster Monk is, along with Blood DK, one of the top 2 tanks in both raids and Mythic+ right now. This is an important starting note, because it sets the foundation of what Brewmaster Monk needs added to it in order to be competitive with other tanks:

Nothing. The class is great.

This makes my job hard. I’m not walking into a class that has been struggling for a long time and saying “here’s what could fix (Protection Warrior).” I’m looking at a fun, powerful, fully-realized tank and saying “This is excellent, but I think it could AND SHOULD be better, and here’s how.”

That being said, we’ve seen the preliminary Bear Druid and Blood DK talent trees, and I would argue that both classes are gaining access to a lot more power than the base classes have in Shadowlands. There’s tons of awesome returning stuff from Legion Druid and pre-Legion DK that I personally love and have missed, and I think Monk could get similar treatment, so let’s get to it.

Dead (and Mostly-Dead) Talents

Brewmaster Monk runs one talent setup most of the time. The only talents that get swapped out are Atténuation du mal for Feinte et esquive to get more defensive reliability in Mythic+, and Vent de jade fulgurant for Livraison spéciale for a bit more damage in Mythic+.

Aside from swapping the level 40 and 45 tiers between raid and Mythic+ setups, and the level 25 tier if you prefer Torpille de chi, there are no options that promote situational tweaking. The level 30, 35, and 50 tiers are all locked in, and the level 15 tier is a choice between +50 DPS (Onde de chi) and ‘I feel lazy’ (Œil du tigre).

The lack of competitive talents hasn’t held Brewmaster back in any way, but it isn’t good for promoting player choice, and most of the underutilized options wouldn’t even be appealing in the context of the new talent tree system.

As examples: Explosion de chi, Crache-feu, Élixir de soins, Flammes célestes, and Combo aveuglant all offer very little value. If you gave Brewmaster the ability to add one of those talents into the base class for free right now, it wouldn’t be exciting. This is a pretty stark contrast to the Bear Druid and Blood Death Knight Dragonflight Talent Tree previews, where players are able to pick up multiple high-value talents that exist on the same row in the Shadowlands trees, and they gain a lot of value from that.

Hopefully all of the frequently-used talents are carried forward. As for the underused talents, if they are brought into Dragonflight’s Monk talent trees – and many probably will be – they will need significant buffs or redesigns to make them appealing.

Honorable Mention:
Chi Explosion was a cool talent way back in Warlords of Draenor that replaced Frappe du voile noir. It spent up to 4 Chi per cast (Frappe du voile noir cost 2 Chi at the time), and depending on how many you consumed, it could also cast Infusion purificatrice, and deal damage as AoE. That was all very interesting and fun to manage, but the removal of Chi from the Brewmaster toolkit in Legion makes its return very, very unlikely. The resource revamp required for that to return as an option probably isn’t a very realistic expectation.

Interesting Temporary Power Effects

Okay, so Monk talents in the era of Legion to Shadowlands haven’t been very interesting, and pre-Legion talents are basically inapplicable. That’s okay, Brewmaster Monks have had tons of excellent bonuses over the years, they just came from Legendaries, Tier Sets, or other systems of temporary power, so let’s focus on those instead.

Let’s start with the strongest Brewmaster Monk bonuses ever:

Tonneau des cieux and Dernier baril de Brune d’Orage. The Sepulcher of the First Ones 4-piece bonus and the de facto Brewmaster Monk Shadowlands Legendary are an incredible pair of bonuses, and they should absolutely be carried forward into Dragonflight in some fashion. They reward skilled offensive play in a way that helps cover up the class’ two biggest weaknesses (small health pool and limited self-healing) while raising the skill ceiling.
On its own, Dernier baril de Brune d’Orage removes the issue of Haste breakpoints, which cause horrendous scaling in between the ranges of 14% and 33% Haste. It also makes the class immensely more fun to play by removing collisions between Fracasse-tonneau and other ability cooldowns via the second cooldown charge. Bringing this bonus forward is a must.

Tunique perdue de Sal'salabim is a Legion Legendary power that was a critical component of my personal favorite Brewmaster Monk ability priority ever. Again, this was a setup that was so good it had to be nerfed. In BFA, Jeu de paume was removed, Combo aveuglant had its Tiger Palm component cut in half, and Frappe du voile noir’s cooldown was increased by 1 second.

Souffle de feu isn’t really that strong of a skill, and it already has a base uptime of 75-80%, so bringing this bonus into Dragonflight doesn’t really make Brewmaster Monk more powerful on its own, but in conjunction with Dernier baril de Brune d’Orage, it creates a satisfying combo that makes the abilities in the Brewmaster rotation feel a little more connected to each other than they are right now.

Item - Monk T21 Brewmaster 2P Bonus, the Tier 21 2-piece bonus, added a decent chunk of defensive value onto casting Souffle de feu, especially in multi-target situations. In conjunction with Tunique perdue de Sal'salabim, this has potential for really good defensive synergy. Anything that can be done to make Souffle de feu feel like a valuable defensive skill instead of a lazy filler is welcome.
Passions calcinées is a Shadowlands Legendary Power that has been a good single-target DPS power and a fun (to some – not me!) playstyle alteration that creates burn windows and Energy pooling windows. It reduces rotational flexibility, which really isn’t great for most tanking situations, but it’s an interesting bonus, and a lot of Monks would love to see it brought forward.
Echarpe apaisante de Gai Plin was a Legion Legendary and a Tier Set bonus in Siege of Orgrimmar (Item - Monk T16 Brewmaster 4P Bonus). It’s a good bonus conceptually, and the healing adds up over time, but it is a little boring and the heals aren’t particularly large on a moment-to-moment basis due to the series of percentage reductions that occur along the way. You take a hit, Stagger ~75% of it, Purify 50% of that, and heal for 25% of THAT, for a total of ~9k healing as a reward for quickly Purifying a 100k hit. Again, it’s not bad, but it’s a lot less interesting than everything in this section that’s above it.
Improved Guard was a Warlords of Draenor Perk that gave Guard 2 charges to its cooldown. This was an amazing power – so strong that top guilds ran double Brewmaster Monk for Blackrock Foundry, the spec was nerfed after progression ended, and Guard was removed from the game in the following expansion. That being said, Breuvage céleste is basically Guard wearing Groucho Marx Glasses, and an improved Breuvage céleste talent that grants it a second charge would be excellent.
Grand fracas is a Legion Artifact Weapon trait, and one of the greatest pieces of quality of life that Blizzard has ever given to – and removed from – Brewmaster Monks. Having a 25 yard range on Keg Smash is exceptional. It helps with picking up adds as they spawn and it reduces the pain of having to move out of melee range for boss mechanics. It’s great. This is probably not coming back, because it helped with kiting, but it should. It’s great.
Célérité de l’eau vive was also a Legion Artifact Weapon trait. It also provided a massive quality of life increase to tanking, effectively granting a constant 30% movement speed buff once stacked up as long as you played correctly. Who wouldn’t want more movement speed?

Covenant Abilities
Let’s quickly cover the main Covenant skills that Brewmaster Monks have used in Shadowlands.

Armes de l’Ordre has made Kyrian the strongest, most popular Covenant for Monk throughout Shadowlands, and it would make sense to bring forward as an offensive cooldown option. That being said, it’s a bit empty from a thematic perspective. Armes de l’Ordre has never really fit into the concept of being a Monk or a Brewmaster, it’s not super exciting without Mikanikos’ Soulbind Tree powering it up, and it’s just a free Keg Smash reset tacked onto a numerically-good-but-boring damage and Mastery buff. If it sticks around, the class will feel familiar, but Monk won’t suffer mechanically without it.
Breuvage poussière-d’os has a more fleshed-out thematic connection to Brewmaster than Armes de l’Ordre. It’s a brew, so the Brewmaster rotation reduces its cooldown, and the defensive synergy it provides while active is noticeable. The bugfixes and buffs to the Covenant Legendary (Breuvage de surabondance) in Patch 9.2 have given it really high uptime, and it is a great bonus with those other powers and the Conduit layered onto it, but as a baseline skill, it’s fairly mediocre. It’s a moderately-long buff cooldown that slightly increases damage and defenses, doesn’t deal any damage or generate resource on its own, and it’s on the global cooldown. If the Covenant Legendary or any Soulbind synergies get baked into it, this is a great candidate for bringing into Dragonflight. At its current baseline values, it’s pretty underwhelming.
Marche du Buffle is Brewmaster Monk’s only interesting bonus from Conduits. It adds an all-around benefit to using Coup tournoyant de la grue, making it a single-target DPS increase in a lot of situations when you are able to squeeze in additional Invocation de Niuzao, le Buffle noir casts. If Invocation de Niuzao, le Buffle noir sticks around in Dragonflight, this could be a decent bonus to bring forward, as well.

But Wait, There’s Less!

Alright, this deserves its own section:

Invocation de Niuzao, le Buffle noir, specifically the line that states Niuzao’s stomps hit “for (16.38% of Attack power) plus 25% of Stagger damage you have recently purified,” is a deeply problematic design, and it should be removed heading into Dragonflight.

Tanks being able to convert damage taken directly into damage dealt is a mistake Blizzard has learned from in the past, and Monk is the only tank with this ability. While Paladin and Warrior both have built-in reactive RNG offensive triggers in the form of Avenger’s Shield resets and free Revenge procs. That’s not really comparable at all to deliberately going to 4+ stacks on Rygelon so that your Niuzao Stomps hit for over 100k.

This is a design that encourages players to deliberately take extra damage to deal more damage, and it stinks. During all of Mythic Jailer prog, I sat down for every autoattack in the first 30 seconds to guarantee that they crit me, so my Niuzao’s stomps would be their absolute maximum. I hated doing it, it’s stupid and wrong, but it was an easy +400k damage compared to tanking him as Blizzard intended, and we needed that damage. It would be stupider not to do it. As The Jailer’s damage has been nerfed repeatedly, I have seen my average DPS in the opener drop by ~2k each time, due to having less damage to Purify for Niuzao’s Stomps.

Even if you enjoy this degenerate playstyle, this also creates a massive problem with Monk’s ability to generate threat. Played at the optimal level, about 25-30% of a Brewmaster Monk’s damage is from Niuzao, particularly during the opener. This means that if Monk is tuned to be competitive in single-target damage, it is going to be at a ~25-30% deficit of threat generated compared to other tanks, because all that Niuzao damage isn’t giving threat to the Monk, it’s generating threat for Niuzao!

Cutting this out would be a pretty easy fix to an otherwise-fine skill, and as long as the class is subsequently retuned to compensate for the loss of damage, it should all be for the best. Anything that deliberately encourages players go out of their way to take unnecessary damage for a massive damage payoff like Niuzao is doing should not stick around. It’s wildly degenerate. It’s got to go.

Conclusion

Brewmaster Monk is in a great state right now, and keeping it both strong and fun heading into Dragonflight should be pretty easy. The current Brewmaster Monk talent tree has stagnated over the past couple of expansions, but the class has a large catalog of powers and bonuses ranging from the distant past to the present that can be repurposed into creating something new. Blizzard has the tools at their disposal to make a version of Brewmaster Monk that is every bit as compelling as the class is now, with a greater variety of competitive talent options. Hopefully they will be ready to show us something soon. I can’t wait to see it.
Mistweaver Monk Talent Tree WishlistSo we have now seen talent previews for 5 classes and the remaining 8 classes are just waiting for their trees to be released. With Blizzard slowly releasing a trickle of information, we thought it would be a good exercise to build out a wishlist of items we would want to see in a Mistweaver Monk talent tree.

Dead and Underused Talents

Before we talk about the new and the exciting, let's talk a bit about some of the current talents, and those that should not be carried forward or should be changed from their current implementation.

Onde de chi - This talent has been skipped for the past 2 full expansions by Mistweavers. Both the damage and healing are too low to be competitive with either of the other options in this row. They could increase the numbers to be a slightly more interesting choice, however, I would rather something new would be added here, potentially a modifier on Extraction du mal to increase it's use.
Torpille de chi - With Soif du tigre being a great spell to use as an additional root dispel or movement speed on another party member, and Vélocité adding a passive option, taking Torpille de chi back to a previous version where it also provided healing would be a great chance to make this row a bit more interesting. This would give you the choice of some additional healing, more personal movement, or a movement external.
Cycles de la vie - While this talent has some niche uses, in general the other two options are stronger. The talent rewards a playstyle that Mistweaver has never had, which is casting a larger number of Brume enveloppante with Vivifier used in between. With a passive option needed here, and the focus on a level of mana efficiency, it may be that we should see a talent that interacts with casting Vivifier into an Brume enveloppante target, or even something that interacts with HoTs.
Chant de Chi Ji - Generally little to no use in PvE. My opinion here would be adding some more utility to Paralysie or Transcendance : Transfert. They could bring back Longe spirituelle to allow for some additional CC. Another idea coming from Mymiro in the community would be to turn this into an AOE silence, to give us multiple different CC options.
Invocation d’une statue du Serpent de jade - While this is an iconic Mistweaver ability, it hasn't been of actual use in most content for years. It honestly provides very little healing in its current form and is trigger by a spell you rarely cast. A pure numbers rework will not bring this to a competitive state. They need to add an additional set of mechanics to this. That could be something like the statue casts an additional Brume de rénovation when you do, or it will replicate some of the healing spells you cast such as Brume enveloppante on another target, somewhat like Baudrier hivernal d'Ovyd.
Tonnerre focalisé - In general, Tonnerre focalisé is the least played capstone talent. However, it would be interesting to keep this moving forward, just at a point in the tree that is a bit easier to pick up. I think it lacks the power to be a top tier talent. One option would be to increase the effect of Thé de concentration foudroyante over just adding more charges, or another similar buff such as Infusion secrète. Also, a quick mention to Remontée d’eau and the fact that this should just be removed. AFK channeling is never fun.

A Clear Direction

Mistweaver has played in its current form for the past 3 full expansions. Vivifier and have been key abilities, along with our mastery, Maîtrise : Bourrasque de brume. We have seen some slight changes, but the core gameplay loop is there. One of the requests going into Dragonflight for Mistweaver, would be to give a clearer direction through the talent trees on how the spec should be played. We currently have talents that just buff our casted spells, Remontée d’eau or Invocation d’une statue du Serpent de jade, and then talents that play to being in melee to deal damage and healing, Brume levante or Invocation de Chi Ji, la Grue rouge. It would be great to build the tree that pushes Mistweaver into being in melee to then enable their healing. Building off of Brume levante, Invocation de Chi Ji, la Grue rouge, , and other old abilities such as Muscle Memory, which refunded mana through using a combination of Coup tournoyant de la grue and Frappe du voile noir.

Keeping the New, New

With this in mind, let's take a look at some of the spells and abilities we would want to continue into Dragonflight.

Piétinement de ligne faë would be a great spell to move forward in a world where it does not directly compete with other covenant abilities. As a comment from June of the Monk Discord, Blizzard could make it a choice talent with the other option being . Give yourself more damage and focused healing for less mana, or more spread healing across a group. This would allow you to have a Mythic+ HoT applicator and then one for large group content.
I cannot go through this wishlist without mentioning Enseignements ancestraux du monastère. This has been the staple legendary the entire expansion. While it has been very good and leans into the melee first gameplay, it could use some changes. Potentially changing the activation spell or giving it an interaction with another stat like mastery would be nice.
Moving Invocation de Chi Ji, la Grue rouge to the default cooldown for Mistweaver to continue to reinforce the melee nature of the class. I would say Blizzard needs to do a better job of highlighting the need to cast Brume enveloppante because it spreads Harmonie céleste while Chi-ji is active.
Adding in Porte des ombres as another mobility option would give Mistweavers a blink, which has been useful across multiple encounters this expansion and provides additional variety in our movement kit.
While most of our conduits where less than desireable this expansion, one thing that would be nice to pull forward, pointed out by Mymiro, is the cooldown reduction concept from Lien de jade. Basically rewarding you with additional larger cooldown if you played into it's trigger effect. While I am not a fan of our Mastery being the trigger, I think adding something similar with a different trigger and allowing our Celestials to be 2 minute cooldowns would be nice to have.

Getting a Bit More General

In terms of the general Monk Tree, there are some exciting options from the other specs that would be fun to play around with as a Mistweaver. While most of the spells are shared across the monk specs, allowing Mistweavers to spec into something like Poings de fureur for more damage, or the ability to pick up an interrupt with Pique de main. Another defensive choice in Méditation zen would also provide some additional tankiness to the Mistweaver. The rest of the general Monk tree will be interesting to see, particularly if we can easily pick up a few of the Windwalker specific spells and abilities.

New Expansion, New You, Old Ideas

While the above has focused on what to continue to bring forward from Shadowlands into Dragonflight, there was some long lost abilities that I would love to see make a comeback. One thing to note is that many of these are from an era of Mistweaver that had Chi as a resource. I think reintroducing Chi would be a great addition to Mistweaver and open some interesting design spaces. Allowing Chi to be our empowering resource, while Mana limits how much Chi we can generate. I don't think Blizzard will be reintroducing Chi to Mistweaver in Dragonflight so the below will need to be reworked from their original implementation to function in a Chi-less world.

Pool of Mists - This granted additional Brume de rénovation charges. It would be nice to push a playstyle that relied on spreading Brume de rénovation over just casting . Additional charges, along with Brumes dansantes that allowed Brume de rénovation to duplicate itself would make for a change in the way Mistweaver would heal a larger group of players. This would free some design space in the Mistweaver to facilitate this spread of Brume de rénovation through the use of other melee damage focused abilities.
Return of the charged based Thé de mana. The older version of Mana Tea was based on accumulating charges of the Brewing buff and then consuming those charges for mana. This allowed a Mistweaver to regain mana during downtime and not just either lessen mana costs through the current version of Thé de mana or regain mana from Enseignements du monastère stacks with . The original version of the spell gained stacks based on Chi generated, so this would need to be updated for the modern expansion.
Chi Explosion to replace Vent de jade rafraîchissant. This would keep a short ranged, AOE healing spell in our kit, but would give us a spell more interesting than a buff we maintain every 8 seconds. The original version of this spell had various effects depending on the number of Chi is was cast with. This could be given an interaction with Enseignements du monastère or another buff / mechanic to empower it, such as stealing some of the new Evoker tech for empowered abilities.
If Blizzard will continue on the path of pushing Mistweavers to cast Brume enveloppante I think the idea of bringing back Baudrier hivernal d'Ovyd and including it in the tree would be interesting. This could be paired with a healing reduction of Brume enveloppante to allow it to be a buff we would utilize before a larger damage event where healing would be needed.
Another older Azerite Trait that would be nice to see a comeback is Fontaine de vie. Again, with the focus more on the cooldown reduction portion, along with some other changes to Thé de concentration foudroyante would change this into a mini-game of work towards pushing the cooldown of Thé de concentration foudroyante as long as possible, and empowering our other spells for additional effects. Again, this is all in service of a set of skills that play off of each other, beyond just our mastery now triggers twice.
Finally, I think our current mastery could use a refresh. With the emphasis above on spreading healing it would be nice to allow our mastery be something you try and avoid. I would even suggest we go back to our roots and bring back Gift of the Serpent. This was the original Mistweaver mastery that would spawn Sphères de soins close to targets you heal. It wasn't great back then, but it would be better than our current Mastery, Maîtrise : Bourrasque de brume, which is just not impactful with the current playstyle.

And Now We Wait

While we can speculate all day on what Blizzard might do, ultimately we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the Monk talent trees to be released. The ideas above are a combination of my own feelings along with some of those from others in the community. This is just one view on where Mistweaver could head in Dragonflight and I think there are more than likely even better ideas from the community at large. My biggest hope for this expansion is that Blizzard leans hard into the melee healing aspects of Mistweavers and reinforces that playstyle. Windwalker Monk Talent Tree WishlistIt should come to a surprise to no one that I have considerable opinions on how the talent tree for Windwalkers should be in Dragonflight. I’ve written several articles on PeakofSerenity.com about what I would like to see for the spec over the years, so drawing on that, with some opinions from the community, here’s my wishlist for Windwalker’s talent tree.

Current Talents
The first step is to obviously look at the current talents and discuss what ones can be kept, canned, or improved:

Tier 1

Onde de chi and Explosion de chi are more than fine. I expect them to be placed into the General Monk talent tree, and the way they work is perfect. It would be nice if Explosion de chi could be cast while moving and Onde de chi prioritized yourself and current target, but those are functional requests, not requirements.
Œil du tigre should be replaced with the Orbite de chi of old, it fits thematically and can serve as the middle ground between the ST focused Onde de chi, and the AOE focused Explosion de chi. It also helps that it can stack up orbs around you for a small amount of burst damage or healing

Tier 2
This tier is also largely fine and something I expect to be put into the General Monk talent tree. If anything, Soif du tigre should become baseline.

Tier 3

Ascension and Poing du Tigre blanc are more than fine, if anything should be done about them then Poing du Tigre blanc could be baked into Paume du tigre somehow, such that every 30 seconds Paume du tigre costs 10 energy less and generates one extra Chi, assuming it won’t cause you to overcap. It removes a small amount of player agency but gives back one keybinding, which is a worthwhile choice to me.
Élixir énergisant needs to be gone. It doesn’t fit with the spec’s theme anymore, with no other “brews” still present. It’s also a pain to use outside of AOE, and its still a pain inside AOE.

Tier 4

Coup de queue du tigre is a dead talent that doesn’t get used ever, so no reason to keep it on. Make it a PvP talent if that will still be “a thing”.
Anneau de paix will absolutely be in the General Monk talent tree if it doesn’t get made baseline, and you’ll just about always take it.
Bon karma is a good talent, even though I hate that Toucher du karma is a defensive that gets used offensively. I’d like to see a twin talent to go with Bon karma called “Bad Karma” that has the damage redirect part, with the baseline just being a shield. Better yet, make it a PvP talent.

Tier 5

Force intérieure could just be a baseline function of the spec, or something you can easily talent into for a small damage reduction.
Atténuation du mal and Diffusion de la magie should certainly be put in the General Monk talent tree so that you can choose between the two like you have been for years.

Tier 6

My general disdain for Combinaison de coups is well documented, and I once again advocate for its removal or change entirely. My preference would be that it is removed and baked into how Mastery works with X% increased damage per stack, but with a “mistake” simply removing one stack, rather than resetting the whole thing. Short of that, its a punishment, not a reward, so it should be removed.
Vent de jade fulgurant is a useless talent currently, but if it were returned to the form it was for a week or two during Battle for Azeroth, and reduced your energy regen as long as it was active, then it's more than fine.
Danse de Chi Ji is too powerful of a buff for it to be a random proc, it completely dominates your ability to do AOE damage. I know a lot of people like it, but if it is going to be kept than I think it needs to be put under control.

Tier 7

Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant is the only talent here that gets used, and it should be made baseline, or as a talent that its expected that you pick up easily in the tree. Even better, it should function the way it did for a few days in its bugged state during Shadowlands, where it triggered any time Poings de fureur and Coup de pied du soleil levant were both on cooldown. It was simpler to use, couldn’t lock you into movement, and was a nice visual. Oh, and it should be renamed to “Whirling Dragon Kick”.
has been a dead talent for the whole expansion after it was changed to be less usable, for some reason. If it is going to continue to exist in some way then it needs to go back to the way it was when we used it. It can still replace Tempête, Terre et Feu, but then it needs to be focused on single target damage and/or burst.
Focalisation spirituelle has been a dead talent for years, but that doesn’t mean it is a bad talent, it’s just that the row is currently a mess. I will talk more about this talent shortly.

Shadowlands Systems

Covenant Abilities
Looking at many of the talent trees we’ve seen, we’ve seen some Covenant abilities make other appearances. I understand the allure of this, but I don’t think it’s the best thing for Windwalkers as a whole, without conditions, and here’s why:

Armes de l’Ordre (Kyrian) - This is the clear choice to be added as an option as its a crowd favorite, maybe even just make this the new . However, much of the “fun” and “power” of Armes de l’Ordre comes from its interactions with Délice de l’invocateur. Without Délice de l’invocateur], Armes de l’Ordre isn’t anywhere near as “fun” or “powerful”, so if its going to be incorporated, then they need to both be accessible so that you can continue to use them together.
Breuvage poussière-d’os (Necrolord) - Another good option to come back, but it turns Windwalker into a one-button-spamming spinning top of damage. Some people like that, but it completely ignores Windwalker’s Mastery, which seems antithetical. I’d like to see this return, but with some change that helps to combat the “spin to win” mechanic. It also just needs a rename since it doesn’t fit the themes at all without being a part of the Necrolords.
Piétinement de ligne faë (Night Fae) - Although this ability is beautiful, I hope that we don’t see it again. However, I think the mechanic of resetting the CD on an ability is one that can be incorporated elsewhere. If it had to make an appearance, then I believe the restriction of needing to be on the line for the reset needs to go, or its CD needs to be reduced enough that you can keep it where you are more easily.
Ordre des défunts (Venthyr) - I had to think hard to remember what this ability was called since Windwalkers have never considered using it. It doesn’t fit mechanically or thematically, and it should be left in Shadowlands.

Soulbind Conduits
This is a harder section for me to think about since Windwalkers have really used the same conduits all expansion and I think they bring as much trouble as they bring help.

Offensive coordonnée is one that I will mention again later, and I think it’s a good option to have, but we have to be able to un-fixate our clones as well, just making it a toggle to fixate or not will go a long way.

Frappes ciblées is another one that I have mixed feelings about. I think it largely should just be baked into how Marque de la grue works, and controlled better, because it is out of control right now, especially when combined with Danse de Chi Ji.

Lien de Xuen is the clear winner for me when I look at conduits that could be brought forward. I’d like to see it combined with other options to augment how Xuen plays, with this one being the “Xuen more often” option. Perhaps adding the Éclair du Tigre renforcé mechanic to Xuen is another talent option, or one that increases his duration but also his cooldown. There are plenty of options to give you choices about how Xuen plays, and Lien de Xuen can just be one of them.

Refus du mal, Transfert rapide, and Art de la chute are just fun additions to the spec that will help to fill out a talent tree with more flavorful choices.

Shadowlands Legendaries
Many of these were things that came from previous expansions as things that people loved, but we just fell into the zero-option dominance of Délice de l’invocateur, which I talked about as it pertains to Armes de l’Ordre, above. However, that is not to say that there aren’t good options for turning legendaries into talents.

Paume céleste de Keefer is 100% something that should be added to the spec, either as a PvP talent, or (even better) as a talent that everyone can get. Combine that with something that increases the range of Paume du tigre so you can zip around faster and its just giving an already mobile spec even more mobility *chef’s kiss*. Sure, some of your characters will die to a poorly timed dash, just like a poorly timed Roll, Coup du serpent volant, or Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Toucher fatal should also be a talent, or just how Toucher mortel works naturally, it’s so much fun to Toucher mortel more, and it’s a good skill-shot ability in PvE content.

Embrasement de jade is a good ability, but given how much people want to see Chi Explosion back, which I’ll talk about below, I think it would be better made into something that launches a Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant or an additional 4-Chi Chi Explosion.

Condensateur du dernier empereur is one that I loathe with a fiery hatred. However, if you could move while channeling Éclair de jade crépitant then I immediately love it. The simplest option is to make one talent that allows you to cast Éclair de jade crépitant while moving, or it could be changed to a 0% movement speed while you cast, with this talent giving you 4% movement speed per stack consumed, or something like that. There are options to make this not lock Windwalkers into one spot, which is essential for the use of this.

Tenue de combat de Xuen is another one that I would love to see added, and I’ll talk more about inter-connected abilities further down. It was simply not strong enough to merit a legendary spot; but as a talent, it may be perfect.

Looking Back
Windwalker has had some really spectacular things over the years, but they have almost always been fleeting, leaving us wanting what was rather than being excited for what is to come.

Azerite Traits
In Shadowlands we saw Danse de Chi Ji become a talent, but its Azerite Trait compatriots, Fureur de Xuen and Gloire de l’aube were left behind. Bringing those two back as options to compete with Danse de Chi Ji would be welcome additions, especially since they could, and would, help Windwalker’s historically terrible, and somehow only getting worse (historically), single target damage.

One thing I’d like to see with all of them is have their proc rates based on Crits so that Windwalkers gain some additional stat scaling from Critical Strike, a secondary stat that makes sense with their “martial arts” motif. I think it could look like this:

Gloire de l’aube - You have a chance, equal to your crit chance, to do a second-backflipping Coup de pied du soleil levant for X% additional damage.
Fureur de Xuen - Critical strikes provide a stacking charge to summon a Xuen when you hit X stacks OR hitting X stacks releases a Poings de fureur.
Danse de Chi Ji - Critical strikes with Coup tournoyant de la grue build up charges. At X charges, your next Coup tournoyant de la grue is free and deals +X% damage.

These functions, as Azerite Traits, gave Windwalker some choice about the way we wanted to direct our damage, and we lost that with the focus on Danse de Chi Ji.

Inter-connecting Abilities
Over the years, Windwalker has seen glimpses of abilities working off one another, mainly during Tombe de Sargeras with our tier bonuses (Tenue de combat de Xuen. We saw it come back in Shadowlands with Tenue de combat de Xuen, but it wasn’t strong enough to use. Adding talents that connect our abilities helps to increase the flow of the spec, fitting for a martial artist.

I already wrote above about why I think that Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant should be baseline and trigger any time Poings de fureur and Coup de pied du soleil levant are on CD at the same time. This gives consistent AOE pressure while continuing to use Coup de pied du soleil levant and Poings de fureur in AOE situations rather than just dropping them for Coup tournoyant de la grue-spam. However, I think Coup de pied du soleil levant and Poings de fureur are the best options for flow between our abilities, as Tombe de Sargeras showed us, I think that talents can help us choose HOW we want them to connect. Something like Stratégie offensive from Torghast is a prime candidate for increasing the connectivity of our abilities.

Many of my ideas are focused on increasing Windwalker’s single target damage, because that’s where it needs the help.

Targets hit with Poings de fureur increase the damage of the next Coup de pied du soleil levant. (Similar to Poing de tonnerre)
Critical hits with Coup de pied du soleil levant increase damage done to that target,by the next Poings de fureur. (Similar to Transfert de puissance)
Every second spent channeling Poings de fureur reduces the CD of Coup de pied du soleil levant by X. (Similar to Tenue de combat de Xuen)

Tempête, Terre et Feu
It’s no secret that this ability has caused some… problems… over the years. Short of removing it entirely, I believe there are some improvements that can be made to it in the way of talents. I can break these down into two things, the first behind “What the clones do” with talent choices such as:

Tempête, Terre et Feu clones jump around to targets, tagging them for Marque de la grue. (Remove this function baseline)
Tempête, Terre et Feu clones can now be directed and controlled independently of each other. (Similar to the original way of it working, rather than both clones needing to be on the same target, let them split up)
Tempête, Terre et Feu clones gain a damage increase when attacking the same target. (Similar to Offensive coordonnée)

The other category for Tempête, Terre et Feu changes are “How does the buff work”. I don’t feel the need for bringing back Infusion œil-du-tigre with its stacking charges, as Windwalker doesn’t *need* something else to track. However, there are things from the past that can be brought back to change up how the buff works:

The duration of Tempête, Terre et Feu is extended by X for every Y chi spent during its duration. (Manchon de corne à boire)
Every X Chi you spend reduces the cooldown of Tempête, Terre et Feu by Y. (Focalisation spirituelle)
Tempête, Terre et Feu gains 1 charge but its cooldown is increased by X. (There are many things like this already in-game)

Frappe du seigneur des Vents
This is the first of two abilities that I believe merit their own section, the second being Chi Explosion.

Frappe du seigneur des Vents is an ability that has been begged for since it went away. People view it as the penultimate Windwalker ability. Most of that tends to boil down to the enormous damage you could do with it every 40 seconds, or the fact that it gave one more ability to press to fill up the downtime. The latter “problem” has been solved in other ways, mainly Poing du Tigre blanc. However, the former problem of the HUGE damage it would do is something that I’ve grown to miss more and more, since it was primarily a ST ability, and as I’ve said a few times, Windwalker ST needs help.

I think bringing back Frappe du seigneur des Vents is a fine option, provided that Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant is made baseline and passive. I simply don’t feel that Windwalker *needs* another damage button to press, it already has some of the most of any spec.

My favorite option is to allow Frappe du seigneur des Vents to be the foil to Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant, where you can only choose one. Coup de poing du dragon tourbillonnant would be the AOE focused option and Frappe du seigneur des Vents would be the ST focused option, both with similar functionality and requirements, so that Windalkers could choose between one big AOE whirl or one big ST smack.

Chi Explosion
Another crowd favorite that gets brought up *constantly* is Chi Explosion, even though I have a feeling that many people currently playing Windwalker didn’t play it in Warlords to know what it was like, or have thought of the one simple reason that it can’t just come back in its current form; our Mastery.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the *idea* of Chi Explosion as a “choose-your-damage-style” ability that flows more flexibility between ST and AOE as a fight evolves and changes. I also think it still works very well as a “finisher” to use all our chi in singlet target situations. However, because our Mastery promotes not using the same abilities twice in a row, we couldn’t just Paume du tigre > Paume du tigre > Chi Explosion in AOE like we used to, without giving up on the Paume du tigre damage bonus from Mastery. Yes, that damage bonus is small, but it also just goes against what the Mastery is trying to get the spec to do, which is not repeat abilities.

The second problem is that in Warlords, Chi Explosion replaced Frappe du voile noir, which is a near-essential ability to have right now in order to keep up the benefit of our Mastery. Yes, again, if you’re not using Combinaison de coups, then you really can hit an ability twice and miss out on a small part of damage from our “spammable” abilities, but it's the principle of the thing.

If Chi Explosion can be worked into the spec in some way that it doesn’t cause you to ignore the Mastery, then I think its a great ability to add to the spec, but it has to be done right, not just done.

Miscellaneous Ideas
For this article I tossed out the questions to the Vets in Discord and got some other suggestions, so here they are in no particular order:

Something similar to Combo aveuglant for Windwalkers
Enseignements du monastère
Guillotine volante fatale
Plumes des cent vols
Bottines de boxeur des ombres
Floraison de feu tournoyante
La Marche de la Légion or Ruée rugissante-type movement boost
Coup tournoyant de la grue or Vent de jade fulgurant as an AOE builder, not an AOE spender
Vents de travers

Connectez-vous pour laisser un commentaire Commentaire Anglais (36)

Commentaire de maxencehoyasWell, I do not agree with the MW wishlist. In my opinion, MW Monks should have 2 viable playstyles: melee with AToM/Chi-Ji and hard caster with upwelling/Yulon. Monks will lose flexibility if Blizzard focuses on one playstyle.
Then, I wish for 3 main builds: melee MM+ with focuses en damages, melee raid and hard caster. Players will choose wich option is best for them.

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